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Thanks Dr Njabe, could you clarify what the gender agricultural policies and programmes are? If they provide women recognition as farmers, then they should contribute to also changing social norms and cultural stigma that invisibilise women's contributions? Within the discussions on unpaid care work, the 3 Rs framework is now the major demand within feminist advocacy. The first step is to recognise women's work. If this is adequately done in policy, the other two, namely, reduce and redistribute, could potentially follow. In the case of agricultural work, this would involve developing appropriate tools and technologies to support and reduce women's work.

Food Security depends on some basic pillars like agricultural production, economics and nutritional status for its complement. The involvement of women dates since ancient agriculture before the industrial revolution. However there are enormous constraints like social, cultural and economic aspects.

Statistics shows that in a region like Sub-Saharan Africa, 80% women are involved in processing food crops, providing household water and fuelwood and about 90% are involved in hoeing and weeding of farmland. Notwithstanding the good gender agricultural policies and programmes that are in place, the strong cultural stigma of women's land rights, educational level and access to agro-credit, still stand as great limiting factors.

However, what do policy makers do with this cultural stigma of women having certain rights and access?

Thank you Dr Peter for your contribution. The Kudumbashree programme in Kerala has indeed encouraged groups of women farmers to undertake collective farming. While such policy recognition clearly support's women's empowerment, do any of the studies undertaken by KAU you mention specifically focus on food security and nutritional outcomes? Do migrant men contribute incomes to their families, or is a large percent spent on liquor? Secondly, while women are clearly involved in all the activities from planting to post-harvest processing, do they receive any support in terms of improved inputs or equipment to help reduce the drudgery and time involved in some of these activities?

"Feminisation of agriculture" is now frequently used as men move to cities for better livelihood. Kerala the southern state of India has shown the way for women empowerment through more involvement in agriculture and related activities. "Self Help Group" has emerged as a viable and socially accepted group. There are even all women farming green armies getting involved in waste disposal, sowing, transplanting, weeding, fertilizing, irrigation, harvesting and post harvest handling including value addition. There are also problems of liquor addition among men which leads to disharmony in families. Kerala has more women than men. There are matriarchal systems followed in a few Hindu and Muslim sections. The very famous court pronouncement giving equal right to sons and daughters to inherited property has further made women important partners in development. The Kerala Agricultural University has established A CENTRE FOR GENDER CONCERNS which conducts research on women empowerment. There are even women climbers to harvest coconuts from 30 feet tall trees. The success story of Poultry raising by self help group is worth studying. There are public canteens run by women only.